Martin Luther King Jr., one now learns, was a plagiarist. This news may be tough for many to swallow, especially the head of a famous university, who may soon be fitted for an academic dunce cap.
The January issue of Chronicles, a cerebral cultural and political monthly published by the conservative Rockford Institute, will contain a startling defense of King from Jon Westling, interim president of Boston University.
The magazine received a letter from Westling last month. He was furious with a piece in the September issue by contributing editor Thomas Fleming, which mentioned a growing belief that King plagiarized parts of his 1955 doctoral dissertation at Boston University.
What Westling did not know was that Fleming had proof of King`s ripping off portions of a 1953 dissertation by another Boston University student. It came in the form of an article submitted to Chronicles earlier by John Reed, a University of North Carolina sociologist, which Fleming had read. It ultimately was withdrawn, apparently after pressure was exerted on Reed, according to Michael Warder, executive vice president of the Rockford Institute.
The plagiarism charge, Westling wrote in a letter given to the Tribune,
”appears to be spreading like whooping cough among the unvaccinated. Allow me to introduce some penicillin.
”Dr. King`s dissertation has, in fact, been scrupulously examined and re-examined by scholars. . . . Not a single instance of plagiarism of any sort has been identified. . . . To my knowledge, the reappearance of this rumor in the recent issue of Chronicles is the first time that any reputable journal has stumbled into this pseudo-controversy.
”To set the record straight, since 1955, when Dr. King submitted his dissertation . . . not a single reader has ever found any nonattributed or misattributed quotations, misleading paraphrases, or thoughts borrowed without due scholarly reference in any of its 343 pages. If you or anyone else have evidence to the contrary, it should be presented.”
Well, last week, the plagiarism story broke wide open in the mainstream media when Clayborn Carson, a Stanford University historian chosen by King`s widow to handle his papers, acknowledged a pattern of plagiarism that would have been evident to Westling if he had compared the dissertations.
The January Chronicles, due in mid-December, will include a comparison. One example:
– 1952 thesis by Jack Boozer: ”Correlation means correspondence of data in the sense of correspondence between religious symbols and that which is symbolized by them.”
– 1955 thesis by King: ”Correlaton means correspondence of data in the sense of a correspondence between religious symbols and that which is symbolized by them.”
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Adam Hochschild, a well-heeled journalist and San Francisco-based co-founder of the muckraking magazine Mother Jones, stopped by during a tour for his new book, ”The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journey” ($19.95, Viking), and was asked about press coverage of the country.
The prime deficiency, he contends, is an underappreciation of black-on-black violence. The impression given is that it tends to be tribe-versus-tribe when, in fact, it`s mostly within one tribe, the Zulus, with one faction heavily supported by the government.
”The effect on the casual news consumer is to leave the distinct impression that as soon as the South African government completes negotiations to end apartheid, all these unruly black people will start fighting one another,” he said. ”We forget that the worst intertribal violence in South Africa was warfare at the start of the century in the Boer War, among white factions.”
Further, Hochschild believes that coverage leaves the mistaken impression that an end to apartheid-even wholesale adoption of the U.S. Constitution-would satisfy all the nation`s problems. In fact, he contends, the nation`s real problem is just as much economic as political, namely the woefully inequitable distribution of wealth.
”There`s a good job done by U.S. media in reporting police brutality, but not enough on distribution of income and government spending; the fact that for every white child, four times as much is spent on education than for a black child.”
Hochschild`s recommended reading list? He chooses The New York Times, especially when correspondent Alan Cowell is on the scene; The Economist, the fine British news magazine; the Weekly Mail from Johannesburg; a news-clipping service out of Holland called Facts and Reports, a compendium of British and South African press reports; and another South African paper, the New Nation. Many libraries get some, if not all, of the above.
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When Elizabeth Richter, with husband and fancy college degree in tow, moved to Chicago in 1973 and got hired at WLS-Ch. 7, she asked a male executive how many women worked at the station.
The executive rattled off a seemingly impressive array of tasks, each performed by a woman, he said.
The only problem, the Wellesley graduate soon realized, was that all the tasks cited were performed by the same woman.
These days, Richter is vice president in charge of production at WTTW-Ch. 11 and one of a growing group of women navigating through the newsrooms and corporate corridors of bigtime TV (often attired as boringly as the guys).
Yet the suspicion lingers that, to appropriate a bit of searing analysis from the musical ”Oklahoma,” where everything was up to date in Kansas City, they`ve gone about as far as they can go.
The issue arose Thursday as Chicago`s top female TV executives were featured at the regular luncheon of the Chicago chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, held at that bastion of American feminism, Ditka`s City Lights.
Richter was joined by Karen Miller, the new vice president for programming at the five CBS-owned stations in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles and Miami; Diana Borri, head of program operations at WMAQ-Ch. 5; Sherry Burns, program director at WLS-Ch. 7; and Pam Pierson, director of creative services at WGN-Ch. 9, in a session moderated by Elizabeth Brackett, Chicago correspondent for ”MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.”
Brackett was a suitable choice, having labored for several Chicago TV stations and, on this day, being able to scan the room and spot most of those who had hired or fired her. All are men.
Though women hold just 6 percent of broadcasting management positions, greater numbers are gaining entry-level positions. But after the panelists detailed their ascensions, the question remained as to whether they could get much further, absent a leveraged buyout of the networks by Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan or Jane Fonda (oops, Fonda might be barred, given her new Turner Broadcasting connection).
Is there, to use pop sociologese favored in such discussions, a ”glass ceiling” for women?
Miller is convinced that such a limit exists, despite her having been tapped by Johnathan Rodgers, her old boss at WBBM-Ch. 2 and the new overlord of those five CBS stations, for a nice promotion. In every job she`s had, Miller has been been the first woman, and as she surveys the CBS upper hierarchy she finds few females.
Burns, who began in radio in St. Louis and was the originating producer for a then little-known Oprah Winfrey at a Baltimore TV station, said, ”It`s up to women like us to lift the ceiling and find other opportunities for women.”
That`s certainly true, suggested Borri, who started at Channel 5 as a teenager doing W-2 tax forms when ”anchors were only making $200,000” and who exudes a certain bulldog candor. It was in no small measure due to a sense of limited opportunities that she used the company tuition-reimbursement plan to earn a masters in business administration.
And while she finds four women running departments at her station, Borri discerns that ”women are not their own best support system.”
Richter said that, for sure, to get a fat job like general manager, one must work hard and make the right political connections. But that itself may reveal a double standard.
”I`ve been told that I was perceived as ambitious and aggressive, and that (assessment) was made as a criticism,” said Richter, whose mandate at Channel 11 includes bringing us the public-affairs observations of John Calloway and the sauces and sermonizing of ”The Frugal Gourmet.”
A blanket invitation was made to male executives in the audience to rise and discourse on whether the notorious glass ceiling exists.
Robert Morse, the general manager of WMAQ who can boast of having news anchor Carol Marin-but gropes to justify having sexist gridiron soothsayer Steve McMichael-said, ”It exists, but there are a helluva lot more cracks (in the ceiling) than before.”
He noted that there have been many ceilings-that, for example, news directors once were deemed unfit to be general managers. The boys from the sales department were seen as more suitable (perhaps they were better at exhausting expense accounts at lunch).
Of course, Morse concluded, ”We don`t have to go into the minority situation. That`s pretty obvious,” which is to say pretty obviously miserable.
